Has anyone figured out a good way to handle the issue of steal declaration without outright prompting the attacker if he is declaring stealth?

I mainly play joust with one other person and we both prefer to play being very strict about timing and making sure everything is played in the correct slot in the flowchart (so much so that we have house imposed 'penalties' if a player acts out of turn or attempts to make an illegal move). As such we want to make sure that the attacker has had the option the declare stealth before the defender kneels to defend, however we do not want the defender to have to prompt the attacker, because we feel that in the event that the attacker forgot, he should suffer the consequences of his own inattention to detail.

I imagine this has come up before, we are just curious if anyone has found a good solution. The best we could come up with is a time limit window where if X seconds have passed it is assumed that the attacker is not exercising his option.

If you are the first player and your opponent has just declared attackers, you must first use or pass your first action opportunity. Then ask you opponent if he has an action or if he passes. Then I guess you could ask "I have now an action, can we proceed to the next action window?". If he says yes and let you play it (or pass), it is too late to declare stealth.

The way you play is nice to learn the game mechanics and funny only if both players are able to do the same.

Of course in a tournament if this strategy is used against a less experienced player you will be watched closely by a judge pityless for each of your own timing mistakes. If you are going to play this way it would be good anyway to inform your opponent at the beginning of the game.

The time limit is not an acceptable solution and would cause too many conflicts I think.

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see the issue here.

1 - Attacking player declares and kneels attackers

2 - Player action window. All players go through this till all have passed.

3 - Stealth is used then defenders are declared and knelt

So stealth is used in step 3. If the defender starts kneeling defenders before stealth has been declared surely the attacker can say "hang on, I haven't declared stealth yet!". So out of courtesy a defending player should ask if they can declare defenders yet. If the attacker says yes then this suggests they do not wish to use stealth.

If you really want to have a process in place to ensure everyone is happy then I would suggest that at step 3 above it is the attacker who says "okay you can declare defenders now" and no-one can declare defenders until they say this. If they give the go ahead it means they do not wish to (or have forgotten to) declare stealth targets.

I'm curious what the "house penalties" are that you use when people make mistakes?

Marshal Lambert said:

We are a bit sadistic haha. If an illegal action is taken, (a card is played during the wrong step in the flow, attaching something to a no attachments card et al), then the card is discarded, the action is undone if caught in time, and the offender must discard the top and bottom card from their deck. A very severe penalty, but after you get hit with it a few times you will definitely pay closer attention than you have been

dh098017 said:

A very severe penalty, but after you get hit with it a few times you will definitely pay closer attention than you have been

Also, my experience is that "attacker forgets to declare stealth" is the opposite problem from what most people experience. The far more typical "problem" is an attacker saying "I attack with this guy, stealthing past this guy," effectively jumping the gun by a full player action window.

With your "time period" idea, how do you know when to start the timer? How do you know that your opponent is forgetting to declare stealth instead of waiting for you to pass in the player action window first? If you do say "OK, we're ready to move on the the next window," how is that so different from saying "are you going to assign stealth"?

Technically, as Marshal Lambert points out, the defender CANNOT declare defenders until after stealth has been declared. If you do, you have jumped the gun. It's kind of like being the second player - you CANNOT Marshal until your opponent says they are done. If you do, you're the one at fault as far as the flow of the game, not them.

I have never heard of a play group being as rabid about this sort of thing as you guys are. After attackers are declared, most people would simply say "I'm going to declare defenders, unless there is something else you want to do first."

Your group is harsh!

Me, I play for fun.... ;-)

dh098017 said:

You house rule seems a bit... wrong. As a Targ player I would love to put some free cards in my discard pile sometimes, so what happens when an attachment gets discarded because of this house rule, can a Targ player then recurse the attachment with LDC if it came off of the bottom of the deck? Can a Bara player put a character that was discarded into play with See Who is Stronger? Does Darkstar come into play since he was discarded from your deck?

I really don't understand why you play with House penalties at all, to be honest. You're going to punish someone for accidentally making a mistake? That's like a teacher in school throwing a piece of chalk at a student for saying "5" when asked "What's 2 + 2?" It just doesn't seem effective or very fair/reasonable. Plus, why play like this if you ever find more people to play with who play the general casual way? You're going to be told "No thanks, let's play our general way." most of the time and it's just going to frustrate you when they make a mistake and just put a card back in their hand or whatever when you're used to discarding that card and a card from their deck. It can potentially really throw you off your game by playing the way you do.

The long and short of it is declaring stealth is something that must be done, even if it is declaring no one is being stealthed. You cannot skip that step. If you want to enact "penalties" (and as was pointed out I would love to have some specific cards in my discard pile where recurring them is cheaper than playing them or become a supplemental form of card advantage that does not take away from my own draw so actually makes some decks work better and therefor is not a penalty at all) you certainly can do so, but it should be against the defending player in this instance since he cannot take any actions in regards to declaring defenders until the attacking player allows him to declare defenders.